so would be e-mails that they so pushed so many people to subscribe to. so would, i don't know sticky on the forums themselves. I found out about it, but in a ridiculously roundabout way. better OFFICIAL advertising would go a LONG way to help this game.

barely. barely advertised. you'd think they would mention it on their official forums and the launcher. you'd THINK they would post reminders closer to event. the fact that there is nothing on dulfy, the same website that updates everything else within hours of its being posted by official sources, is pretty telling dontcha think? what is the point of subscribing to news e-mails when they are not sent out? what is the point of news scroll on a launcher when its not getting updated? facebook? that was it? seriously? it barely qualifies as an advertisement. not everyone wants to have or has facebook. same applies to twitter. is it really THAT hard to cover all the official bases?

what i would like to know is why it got virtually no advertising. there are no official mentions here and as consequence - nothing on dulfy either. it was not on the launcher and there were no e-mails of any sort. I wouldn't have even know it was happening if guildie in a multi game guild didn't mention it sorta showed up on facebook once? I mean... I'm part of a swtor facebook group and they didn't seem to have known about it either. unless you pay particular attention to your xp bar (which I rarely do and tend to keep it out of the way on my UI) you may not even realize that something is going on. why is that? why NOT advertise it?

I wasn't trying as i was posting. I was trying around 9pm eastern on a Tuesday night, while having healer selected in addition to dps (yes I can heal, I actualy prefer to heal, dps was to cover all the bases, just in case). tried both difficulties too. speaking of which, I believe my 7 days are about to run out. I think I'm going to wait till next patch before giving it a go again.

mouse droid section specifically annoyed me because you always start from the very beginning and the stealth is incredibly unforgiving, so when you are going for the farther buttons and get discovered? one shot and start. from very. beginning. unless they changed something since i last played? there are no check points. you don't respawn farther in. you have to. start. from. the start. I'm getting pissed off just thinking about it.

yep. very, VERY annoying, especially when your companion of choice is closer to the bottom of that gigantic companion list.

I had trouble with queue popping on ebon hawk, personaly. grabbed a 7 day referral from a guildy in another game to check out new Iokath chapter and see if I want to come back for longer term and I can't even seem to get a group for uprising, during what should be prime time? i understand that some wait is expected, but I don't remember it being THAT long. this is not very encouraging at all.

I think part of the reason cartel sales are dropping is that you ARE discouraged to spend time on alts and part of it is because there were so many packs at this point that its likely majority of people have more cosmetic armors, weapons, crystals etc unlocked that they could ever use even if they played more alts, and most new offerings are just not compelling enough to add more to it.

walker and mouse droid sections of Kotet that are not skippable and required is #1 reason why its highly unlikely I will ever play through that story on alts. even while coming to terms with the story and I guess being ok with the direction the story is going... the fact that i HAVE to do that stealth mouse droid section as well as the slow, cumbersome walker part is why my trooper will never reunite with Elara, and my warrior will never get a chance to kill Quinn. I understand that some people enjoy those and i'm perfectly ok if some of the dailies required them, because dailies can be skipped with no impact, while unskippable gimmicks inside a story for someone whose only reason to even come back to play is a story? yeah... at this point I'm begging that those sections just have an option added to just skip them. I don't care if i don't get a quest reward for them. I don't care about experience or credits from them. I just don't want to be forced to do them.

before I stopped playing once my subscription lapsed (blame bioware's long holidays for me still being able to post ) - the one that I found to be the most pleasant in that I could only pay fraction of my attention to the game, while watching something on Netflix or hulu - was solo flashpoints, specifically the ones that were originally meant as trinity flashpoints. bosses drop (or at least dropped before I stopped) very small flashpoint xp boost consumable, with final boss dropping small consumable. solo means you can burn right through them at whatever pace you find the most comfortable - do bonus if you want, skip if you don't (some bonus bosses dropped flashpoint cxp for me, others did not - cannot remember specifically which ones did not. BT and Esseless were best for that) becasue its meant for pretty much any player - its much MUCH easier and faster to do than even veteran (former story) mode with other players. and as far as I remember - rewards decent enough completion bonus if you do them through galactic command interface (you can reject and retry for the flashpoint you want the same way you would with heroics). best part is - you don't have to compete against other players like with heroics that happen in non instanced areas. that was personal preference anyways. heroics on one hand gave alliance crates. on the other hand - unless it was fixed in the last couple of weeks - once you hit lvl 66 - you start getting 1 box per completion, instead of 2. which was another thing I found annoying aside from fighting for spawns in open areas (even if you grouped - it was still annoying, as there would be other groups as well) P.S. the reason I didn't like veteran or HM flashpoints, despite ostensibly better rewards is because pugging is a crapshoot. sometimes you get an awesome group and sometimes you get one that drags on and on and on... AND in addition to that, you are on other people's schedule. with solo flashpoints, setting my own pace, also meant I could walk away if I had to at a moment's notice, or burn through double time and no one could change that. that said.. I stopped doing that all together before I even hit rank 20. just... felt boring and pointless. crafted myself and augmented a set of 228 mods in case I come back and called it a day.

strongholds are legacy wide. in that all your characters can acess them, but you only get one stronghold location per legacy, so all your characters have to share. you can change the name of the owner of the stronghold if you want.

its actualy even easier to explain. 300 years is the exact amount of time that Revan was holding emperor back. Emperor's influence rubbed off on Revan apparently turning him into a genocidal maniac while Revan's influence rubbed off in emperor in turn, so he went off to start a family. the hold Revan had was weakening and possibly was weakening ever since original breaking of Coruscant treaty - you know the one where Satele is still a padawan and first meats Jace Malcolm who will eventually become Theron's father. its why exile's force ghost starts attempting to contact Master Ortug, to get him to get Revan out of malestrom prison. the problem is - there are still contradictions within the story that have to be fixed by actual fanfiction to make even modicum of sense (like the whole - influence on each other between Revan and emperor? its me attempting to extrapolate an explanation from the bits we do know, not something the game explicitly or implicitly states, since they basically go - oh yeah, Valk was an awesome emperor of Zakuul all along! or something). and the execution of KOTET itself is IMO lacking.

you know this makes me wonder if its possible that drop rates differ depending on what level the character is.

nope, they directly stated that this is it for story of this expansion.

yep. I believe they were originally replaced with companion gifts, though post 5.0 they seem to have been supplemented with blue BoE gear. but.. I think I saw a single datacron drop once since 4.0

1. I thought I disliked chapter 10 of KOTFE. KOTET chapters, especially chapter 3 - made me actualy appreciate it. chapter 3 in particular (though its not the only chapter that annoyed me, but its the one that annoyed me the most) is the reason why I'm never playing though KOTET again. ever. 2. the story fits horribly to most characters and classes, it seems to be tailored to light side jedi the most. 3. no companion returns, just lazy mentions about some of them via time and achievement gated companion so anyone who didn't get her - will not get even that. 4. personal preference obviously, but I disliked the direction of the story. and given how it ends, I fail to see where it could POSSIBLY lead without messing with our characters severely. again. oh and bonus. virmire style choice. again. /gag bonus number 2. I usually like cutscenes. a lot. like... replaying the same class story for the 5th time and STILl watching every single one of them kind of "a lot". but there was something about KOTET scenes that just.. dragged. the pacing was awful for me. I had to force myself not to spacebar, mainly because spacebar - ends the entire cutscene, not just slower bits and I kinda wanted to see if it gets any better. one thing I liked? Darth Acina's comeback and redesign. which of course was marred by the fact that both she AND my sorc would randomly forget that they were on the same council, AND have worked together before thought the weapons of chaos storyline. I just loooooved hearing her explain to my sorc how sith worked with my sorc actualy replying as if she didn't know :/

my preference would be. 1. make GC xp bar legacy wide, increase the xp gain slightly and stop the increase of the gap between each new crate at around 2500xp. adjust xp gain from various activities so that they are a bit more balanced. yes group activities should rewards more cxp with hardest content resulting in fastest gain, but someone doing heroics or solo chapters should also be able to see visible tangible progress within a single gaming session. 2. take gear tokens out of crates - everything else they have, keep as is 3. bring back gear vendors. 4. instead of having a chance for token from a crate - make it milestone crates. every 10 crates, you build up to a token that can be exchanged for any piece of gear you want at the vendor. this means that you still need to put in a fair bit of effort into gearing and your alts will need to do their own earning (or one of your characters would have to anyways, but regardless it will take effort), but the randomness and frustration is taken out of the equation, becasue you KNOW you will be rewarded. keep tier 1, 2,3 as is 4a. as a possible idea make it that occasionally randomly in a crate, you have a chance of getting an item that will upgrade your tier item/armoring to its better version, so that those pieces you got initially? have a chance of still staying relevant.

precisely. I've also explained exactly why the game in general currently has a very player unfriendly model. in detail. it was never particularly friendly but KOTET amplified already existing issues. but that just makes me a hater and a whiner, dontcha know?

ah, that's good to hear, in my cursory google search I only found that their prior agreement would be expiring in 2017. that said, didn't they mostly stabilize? I know you are being sarcastic, you know with eye roll and everything, but just in case - no. that doesn't mean fewer people play other MMO's. it means that they don't hate the business model of those games nearly as much as they hate the one swtor has. and with a good reason. I cannot think of another game that punishes its players for not subscribing, while providing very little new content worth continue to subscribe for - quite as much. Even WoW - a game that is subscription only, not only offers players an option to stay subscribed with in game gold while simultaneously providing players a safe, legal way to buy gold - but 99% of the cool cosmetics and the like? are earned through gameplay and gameplay alone. yeah, there are store/trading card mounts and pets. but compared to all the stuff added to gameplay? its minor (and black market auction house that provides a chance to get these items, as well as items that have otherwise been removed from the game? genius gold sink) SWTOR is the game that wants its players to stay subscribed, while simultaneously putting most of the cool new stuff into a cash shop and not even for direct purchase, oh no - gambling packs, and in a meantime providing minimum of new content. certainly lots to love here. P.S. I still have the game installed. I still enjoy playing around with strongholds and original 7 stories (sorry, jedi knight is the only story I didn't enjoy enough to want to replay it) new stuff though... such as it is. blah.

others already pointed out that Turbine fixed the issues players had with mines of Moria, but other then that - that expac came with a HELL of a lot more new content that KOTET. WoW is a game with millions of subscribers, and its the game with developers that are a LOT more active on their forums and attuned to feedback as well as exponentially larger content releases. case in point. flying. they really wanted to get rid of flying in future expansions. players rebelled. guess what? there's now a compromise, where flying is delayed and needs to be unlocked, but its back as expected part of new content. also, like its been pointed out - bioware have gotten a LOT of constructive feedback for years. how did they respond it? by doubling down on their original ideas - f2p too restrictive, drives players away? lets make it even MORE restrictive, oh some of the people you played with and bought passes for, didn't subscribe? lets just remove that particular source of cash flow - subscribe or bust. people have mentioned that severe f2p and preferred restrictions are pushing more players than they get t subscribe. and mmo's live and die on their communities, on a sheer numbers of people to play with. you NEED people. by creating a system that is downright hostile to f2p players in a game that is SOLD as f2p, and STILL penalizing subscribers by putting VAST majority of nice looking fluff behind ADDITIONAL paywalls to subscription all the while releasing very little fresh content and artificially extending old, worn content via long grinds and RNG - they are driving away just about everyone. Whales are only whales when they have people to play with. people have explained why galactic command needs to be reworked and given variety of suggestions on HOW - for weeks prior to its release and for weeks after. the so called compromise we got is not compromise at all. its still as unfriendly to most players as ever. they made promises that they broke again and again. how long are you supposed to wait and see and SPEND YOUR MONEY? what sort of ridiculous "stay in an abusive relationship, becasue there were some good times, without actualy working on making this relationship better, just hoping it fixes itself" mentality is that??? and yes, I'm also posting here becasue forums haven't reset yet. but... guess what! there are other forums to post on that don't require subscription at all. and ironically, it seems reddit might possibly be a better place for feedback than official forums, given how bioware shut down all but swtor forums in favor of using social media, including reddit. but one hopes, that maybe, just maybe.. they are still occasionally reading their own forums? in any case. another difference between this and WoW s that Blizzard owns warcaft IP. EA and bioware? are just renting it. and it is about to expire in a few years. guess what happens unless they wake up and stop driving their players away? its going to get shut down, just like Warhammer online got shut down, because its TOO expensive to renew the license as pricey as Star Wars on a game that's making relatively little profit and has relatively small population. looking at LOTRO news... I'm finding that they may just be facing this issue as well, seeing as their license to LOTRO expires next year. so yeah... doomsaying is a bit more warranted here, because some of us have SEEN games get shut down. sometimes due to licensing issues, some times, due to profits being too low, sometimes - both.

that's the problem. community is melting away. fewer players means even the whales that buy all those cartel coins... have fewer and fewer reasons to do so. costumer unfriendly models? drive customers AWAY. and honestly? I hate it that its happening. I loved this game back when it came out, warts and all. open beta player, early acess, loved it enough to get off my *** and go to midnight launch event, despite already having the game in my hands (early acess and all) I STILL have the launch poster signed by the bioware founders framed and hanging in home office. I don't want this game to die. I want to continue to to love it. but the direction that bioware has been taking it in? is making it damn near impossible.

I started playing it because it was bioware game. except it barely passes for one nowadays, so no more subscription from me, not continuously. as much as I enjoy Star Wars and I do... I've yet to play and continue to play a game solely because of its IP. kinda why I skipped Star wars galaxies because it didn't sound like my kind of game. that said. I'm reasonably sure that if it wasn't star wars? it would have crashed and burned faster and more spectacularly then wildstar. or no man's sky. bioware or no bioware. this game has been steadily going downhill since Rise of the Hutt Cartel... but that downward spiral has also been getting progressively worse.

opinions aside though, when comparing SWTOR to other comparable games on the market - it does in fact have one of the most, or the most customer unfriendly monetanization model. everything from restrictions to amount of content released for the money charged... its not just baseless hatred. its something that's based on evidence

another reason why this doesn't exactly apply is because in order for you to buy cartel market stuff on GTN, SOMEONE had to have spent cash on it. boxes in overwatch you can buy through gameplay alone, you don't have to hope that someone else somewhere spend their cash so that they could trade them to you for in game currency. with boxes like in overwatch, paying for boxes with cash is a genuine choice - an option rather then the only way.

you got 12 green crystals per story quest turn ins, 200 or was it 300? crystals for finishing SoR prelude (not counting drops and prior quest turn ins) and a bunch here and there from other content. by the time I got to 65, I didn't need to do anything other then go to vendor and grab upgrades. even if you spent 6 crystals per gear piece to upgrade while leveling every once in a while. starting with SoR prelude, you got gear in addition to crystals so no need to even to worry about THAT until you got to 65. and the cost of 208 gear was between 80 and 140 depending on a piece (full piece so it was roughly 40 crystals per modification). or you could do what you do now and research mods/armorings/etc from vendor recipes now I HAVE to research the mods AND farm the mats separately. i don't have option of vendor gear anymore. it used to be i got crystals AND credits. now its just credits. before I could craft some pieces, buy the rest from a vendor. or just buy everything from a vendor. or spend crystals on decorations and spend credits on crafted mods. now, I have HALF the options I did before. and like I said. you got lucky. most people aren't that lucky with GC boxes